A multilevel analysis of sociability, usability, and community dynamics in an online health community

Abstract

The aim of this research is to develop an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of online group interaction and the relationship between the participation in an online community and an individual's off-line life. The 2½-year study of a thriving online health support community (Bob's ACL WWWBoard) used a broad fieldwork approach, guided by the ethnographic research techniques of observation, interviewing, and archival research in combination with analysis of the group's dynamics during a one-week period. Research tools from the social sciences were used to develop a thick, rich description of the group. The significant findings of this study include: dependable and reliable technology is more important than state-of-the-art technology in this community; strong community development exists despite little differentiation of the community space provided by the software; members reported that participation in the community positively influenced their offline lives; strong group norms of support and reciprocity made externally-driven governance unnecessary; tools used to assess group dynamics in face-to-face groups provide meaningful information about online group dynamics; and, membership patterns in the community and strong subgroups actively contributed to the community's stability and vitality.

Social Support and User Engagement in Online Health Communities

“…Research has found that such support can help patients adjust to the stress of living with and fighting against their diseases [5,6,7] and is a consistent indicator of survival [8]. An OHC also serves as an outlet for users' emotional needs and improve their offline life [9]. Thus active engagement in an OHC has been found to be therapeutic to users [10] and it is important to keep users engaged in the community.…”

Agent Based Modeling to Inform the Design of Multiuser Systems

“…In terms of design implications, the simulation results call for reconsideration of well-established beliefs in the effectiveness of a narrow focus (Maloney-Krichmar & Preece, 2005 ) and community-level moderation (Preece, 2000 ). While these practices remain useful for some communities, our research suggests a contingency view of online community design.…”

Designing and evaluating online communities: research speaks to emerging practice

“…For example, communities with a tradition of aggressive responses or put-downs, if they manage to exist at all, will be more like arenas in which there is a relatively small number of participants with many onlookers [4]. Other communities may evolve over time to develop strong norms of acceptable behaviour [3,5]. Both are examples of social adaptations, that is, sociability.…”

“…For example, in one online community studied, interviews with participants revealed that they were happy with an older product and saw no need for upgrading to state-of-the-art software. The major concern for these participants was 24/7 availability of the server and consequent access to their community [3,5].…”

“…In the next two sections we describe two research studies that suggest ways of evaluating usability and sociability online. The first is a multi-level analysis of a single online community in which an ethnographic approach was adopted [3,5]. The second study involved developing and testing emergent heuristics for evaluating sociability and usability that would guide online community design and evaluation [26,27].…”